Thales Provides e-POC to Navy for Drone-Based Mine Countermeasures Missions

The French defense procurement agency (DGA) placed an order with Thales, via the Organization for Joint Armament Cooperation (OCCAr), for the provision of an Expeditionary Portable Operations Centre (e-POC) to meet the French Navy's new requirement for a drone-based mine countermeasures capability.

The system was developed in less than six months and has been accepted by the DGA and OCCAr after completing sea trials and delivered to the French Navy. The e-POC demonstrator enables naval forces to conduct mine countermeasures missions quickly and efficiently using only unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs).

Thales's e-POC demonstrator is an easily transportable solution that will ultimately enable the French Navy to deploy underwater drones for mine countermeasure missions in any theater of operations. It will provide a flexible mission management capability from outside the zone of operations, helping to keep naval personnel out of harm's way. The e-POC demonstrator runs software developed for the M-Cube¹ and MiMap² systems on a single computer equipped with three control screens to plan, execute and analyze missions requiring the simultaneous deployment of up to three UUVs. The system can be set up on board a ship or at a shore station and is small enough to fit into just six transport cases for deployment into the theatre of operations. The transport cases are stowed inside the UUV container to streamline logistics and boost mission effectiveness.

"Thales has combined the power of innovation with the agility of its development teams to augment the defensive capabilities of the French Navy. The e-POC solution is designed for rapid deployment into any theater of operations, making a valuable contribution to future mine countermeasures missions and helping to guarantee the safety of naval personnel," said Gwendoline Blandin-Roger, Vice-President Underwater Systems, Thales.

¹MCUBE is the Mine Counter-measure Mission Management system

²Mission analysis tool that enables operators to analyze sonar data in real time or recorded during a mission, with the support of artificial intelligence.